


you always gave up on the wrong dreams

by subwaycars



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaycars/pseuds/subwaycars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, there isn't any closure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you always gave up on the wrong dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, spoilers, obviously.
> 
> Secondly, I totally refuse to believe Coulson is dead. Therefore, naturally, the first fic I finish is the one where Coulson is dead. Such is life.
> 
> All types of comments/constructive criticism is welcome! Thanks for reading! :)

Phil Coulson’s dead and he doesn’t come back to life. The world keeps turning. They probably have Phil to thank for that.

Clint doesn’t stop hoping anyway.

 

The first thing Clint does, after shawarma, after medical, after a shower, is go in search of the body. He’s tired, the sort of exhaustion that leaves him shaking in the end, but his hands are steady when he drops through the ceiling into the empty morgue. There are seventeen drawers filled and labeled, and two bodies out on the tables still. Eight of them have arrow wounds. He ignores that for now. It’s a grief and a guilt for another day.

Coulson’s body isn’t anywhere in there. He looks twice. There’s no paperwork either.

“Where is it?” Clint asks, because he’s not too exhausted that he hasn’t noticed Fury lurking in the shadows for the past five minutes.

“You’re not cleared to be in here, agent,” Fury says, looking down at his hands. Then, “It’s classified.”

“Why is it classified?” Clint asks and doesn’t expect an answer. He lets himself slump back against the wall. The tiny ball of hope sitting in his chest would be a lot easier to kill if there was a body.

Fury looks at him for a moment, as close to sympathetic as he can probably get.

“Get back to your quarters, Barton,” he says, and leaves.

Clint takes one last look at the room and heads out too. There’s nothing left for this room to tell him.

 

They have a small memorial for Coulson in the canteen at HQ four days later. It’s a memorial for them all, really, but Fury only gets up to talk about Coulson, so, in Clint’s head a least, it’s a memorial for Coulson.

“Phil Coulson was a good man,” Fury starts and Clint doesn’t bother to hear the rest, knows everything Fury could possibly say. He wants to get up and say something too, thinks Coulson at least deserves that much, but he’s never been good with words and there are too many agents and support staff that are still skittish around him. They won’t really listen to anything he’s got to say and Coulson deserves better than that too.

Clint sneaks up into the ceiling the moment he has the chance. He hides there and listens and ignores the way everyone’s shoulders get a little less tense when they realize he’s gone and ignores the ache in his chest.

Every once in a while, out of the corner of his eye, he swears he sees Coulson. It’s never anything though. After the third time, he quits looking.

 

Coulson’s office gets cleaned out on a Wednesday, his locker the next day. More than anything, cleaning means emptying out all of Coulson’s meticulously organized file cabinets, all the paperwork divided by security clearance and sent to other agents. Coulson doesn’t have much else to clean out- no photographs or art on the walls. There’s a spare suit, shirt, tie, socks, shoes combo in the closet in the corner, and a bank statement stuck under a stack of paperwork that gets shredded. There’s a little Captain America figurine hiding in the top drawer of his desk and an Iron Man one stuffed into the bottom drawer like a secret. Clint swipes them both long before the cleaning crew comes through.

He sleeps on the battered, old couch on Friday night and then again on Saturday and Sunday. The new guy moves in on Monday.

It takes three days for Clint to stop breaking in afterhours. The office has stopped smelling like Coulson by that point anyway.

 

He buys a Hulk figurine and a Thor one in a store. He orders Nat’s and his off the internet. The mailman at HQ gives him a look when he delivers the box, and that’s all the proof he really needs about how thoroughly they’re examining what little mail he gets.

He ignores it, gets to lining up the little set of figurines he’s got collected on his dresser. He could have gotten a Loki one too, but he thinks it’s a little pointless to waste money on something he would only burn. It wouldn’t have made him feel better anyway.

His figurine looks nothing like him, ugly and more than a little creepy. Coulson would have loved it. He would have teased Clint about it in that way he had, bland and subtle. Clint would have laughed.

He wonders how much the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. hates that Clint got twenty good men and women killed and an action figure like he’s some sort of superhero.

Coulson probably would have been proud.

He ignores the sad look Rogers gives him when he stops by and resists the urge to use his own face for target practice daily.

He wants to have the full set ready, just in case.

 

Clint has a list of about a hundred good reasons and explanations and excuses for why Coulson can’t be dead that he carries around his in head.

He doesn’t mention it to anyone. Natasha looks at him like she knows anyway.

It’s not like he doesn’t have enough fodder in his psych evals already.

 

Clint gets cleared for duty and there are other missions. Natasha gets sent to Southeast Asia and Clint heads to Uruguay. After that it’s Bhutan, and then it’s Somalia, and then it’s Canada of all places. He sees Stark every once in a while, mostly on TV, but twice, notably, in the hallways of S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Stark gives him a crisp sort of nod Clint doesn’t know what to do with each time. He’s not sure what Coulson would say about that.

It’s probably time Clint stops memorizing every second of his life so he can relay it to Coulson later.

“Barton,” Fury sometimes says in-between missions and debriefs, voice just a shade different, like he’s got a secret he’s trying to keep. It doesn’t happen often, once every few months maybe.

It makes Clint’s throat go dry every single time.

It’s never anything though. He knows. Fury never looks him the eye.

Fury always looks them in the eye when he lies.

 

There’s a moment, once, in a mission, when things go south and Clint says, unthinkingly, “What’s your call, Coulson?”

He still forgets, sometimes. Most of the time, if he’s honest, but Clint’s never been good at honest when it counts.

The mission gets done anyway, eventually, and Clint can’t even be bothered by the way his entire body aches.

Sitwell gives him this pitying sort of look when he gets back to base to report, and it’s maybe the worse thing that’s happened since Natasha looked at him and said, “Barton. _Clint_. Clint, you have to know…”

It’s not the last time he forgets. It’s the last time he gives anyone a chance to pity him.

 

Clint breaks into Coulson’s apartment long after they clear it out. It seemed like the thing to do. There’s two S.H.I.E.L.D. cameras hiding in the light fixtures and the vents, and two more bugs. Clint crushes them all and hates how it does nothing to crush all that horrible hope he’s been carrying around in his chest for so long. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get any sort of fucking closure. He’s not sure he even wants it at all.

There’s nothing of Coulson’s left in the place, and Clint kinda likes it better that way. It seemed like too much of a goodbye to come months ago, with all of Coulson’s things in the places he’d put them. He’d never been before, and it seemed unfair, maybe even unkind, to see it all without Coulson there to show him it.

He’d maybe been waiting.

Clint’s always been good at waiting. He’s never quite learned how to stop.

 

Clint gets nightmares. It happens. A lot of the time they’re things that never happened, more often, they’re things that did. Sometimes, he dreams about what he could have done differently.

He’s got this one reoccurring dream about a moment that’s half-remembered. It might have been from Syria in oh-seven, or maybe Mongolia in oh-nine. It doesn’t matter anymore.

What matters is this:

There was a moment, once, when Clint could have kissed him. He knows he could have kissed him. He could have leaned right in, and Coulson would have let him, might have even kissed him back.

There was a moment, just once, where he could have let himself fall in love. But he’d given up on that dream long ago, and he hadn’t.

Except he kind of did anyway, and he’s so stupid for only just realizing that now.

 

Phil Coulson’s dead and he doesn’t come back to life. Clint Barton fell in love once, and hasn’t stopped falling since.

The world keeps turning.

Clint keeps breathing because that’s the sort of thing Coulson would have wanted.


End file.
